by Claire Kent
“To care about you,” Erin interrupted. “Yes. I do. You’re so important to me now. But, Seth, we’re not a couple.”
He wasn’t looking at her anymore. Or at their daughter. He stared at the floor, and his entire body was rigidly tense. “My mistake. I misunderstood.”
Erin realized that she had hurt him. Really hurt him. “Seth, I’m sorry,” she began, her voice softer and gentler. “I never thought—”
He shook his head. “Don’t.”
She stopped talking. Held her squirming baby and tried to think of what she could say to fix this.
The silence between them was long and awkward and heavy.
Until their daughter smacked her lips.
Erin looked down at the noise, and her expression softened automatically.
Today had lasted forever, and it didn't seem fair that she'd been hit with all of this at once.
She loved her little pumpkin so much.
Didn’t know how everything had just fallen apart.
Seth was now looking down at the baby too. “Erin,” he said at last, his voice low and as hard as granite. “Erin, I can’t do this halfway anymore.”
Suddenly, she was filled with an entirely different sort of terror, and a whole flood of implications rose up with crippling force. “Then don’t! Love her. Love her all the way. Love her as much as you can.”
Seth slowly raised his eyes to meet hers, as if they’d been too heavy to lift. “And you?”
She almost choked at the question in his eyes. “We're partners. And we care for each other, just like we’ve been doing.”
She was so tired. So utterly leveled. And this was one trauma too many.
Her voice broke on her final question, “Isn’t that enough?”
He didn’t answer. His body was clenched so tightly that she was afraid if she touched him he might break.
“Seth,” she whispered, to make him understand. “The only good reason for us to be together is if we were in love.”
His head jerked away from her. As if she’d slapped him.
“Seth. Oh God! I didn’t know—”
He jerked to his feet, less graceful than she’d ever seen him. “Forget it.”
He stared for an aching moment at their daughter in her arms.
Then shook his head again. “Forget all of it.”
He turned around and walked out of the room.
Erin called out after him, “Seth!” Would have followed if she’d been able to move. “Seth!”
Her voice must have been audible down the hall, but he was gone. He would walk out of the maternity wing, down the elevator, out of the hospital completely. Back to his blue luxury car, his intentionally impressive apartment, and the world he could control.
It was a truth universally acknowledged that he had no heart to break.
Not so long ago.
Erin kept staring at the half-open door.
But, this time, Seth didn’t come back.
Twelve
It had been three months since Erin had really gone out, except to work or do errands.
It wasn’t that she was particularly depressed or anti-social, but she didn’t have the time, energy, or focus to do anything except trudge through her basic routine. She’d gone back to work last month and also managed to get to the grocery store. Otherwise she stayed at home and took care of her baby, often in a sleep-deprived haze.
This week, however, Liz had been nagging her incessantly, so Erin finally relented and agreed to have lunch with her sister that Saturday.
The pumpkin came too, of course. Saturday was the nanny’s day off.
Erin actually felt pretty good as they waited for their food to arrive at a casual sandwich shop near her apartment. Her daughter was sleeping in a convertible carrier—which hooked into both a car seat and a stroller—and, having just fed her before they left the apartment, so far no screaming had occurred.
Erin was tired, of course, but she was always tired now. She’d managed to catch a shower, blow-dry her hair, and put on a decent outfit that morning during naptime, which she wasn't always able to do on Saturdays.
It was kind of nice to sit in a restaurant and have a conversation like a normal person.
The waitress came over just then to bring them their paninis, and she stopped to gush over the “sweet little baby.”
“How old is she?” the waitress asked, leaning over and making cooing sounds, apparently not caring that the infant was asleep and thus couldn’t hear.
“Three months,” Erin answered.
“She’s adorable. Those cute chubby cheeks. That sweet red hair. And the dress!” The waitress tsked her tongue. “She looks just like a little pumpkin.”
Both Erin and Liz broke into giggles at this, and the waitress finally left the table with a few more appreciative bursts of baby-talk.
“I can’t believe you actually found this dress,” Erin said, pulling down the brown skirt to cover her daughter’s legs. “I hope it didn’t cost too much.”
“Once I saw it, I had to get it, no matter how much it cost.” Taking a huge bite of her sandwich, she mumbled, “But it wasn’t too expensive.”
The dress was orange and brown cotton knit, and it had little pumpkins lining the hem of the skirt and a bigger one on the chest. While she straightened the dress, Erin automatically assessed her daughter’s condition, making sure she was sleeping well and didn’t appear to be too cold or uncomfortable.
“You know, one day she’s going to hate you for that nickname,” Liz continued.
Erin shrugged and stroked one tiny hand with her fingertips. “She still feels like the pumpkin to me.”
“I don’t think she really has red hair, though, like the waitress said. It’s more like blond, isn’t it?”
“Well, it seems to be getting a little redder now.”
Half-rising so she could see better, Liz peered into the carrier. “I guess it’s kind of red. I was hoping it would be blond.”
The baby-hair had started very fair, but now the soft strands were closer to reddish-gold.
“It might be,” Erin replied. “Sometimes babies start with reddish hair, and it changes back to blond later.”
Liz was quiet for a moment as they both gazed at the sleeping baby. Then she asked, in a different tone, “Did Seth have red hair when he was a kid?”
Erin felt a little clench in her chest at his name. “Yeah. I think he did.”
“I wonder what he was like as a kid. He was so wild and…I don’t know…hard when he came to town. I can’t imagine him as a little boy.”
“His grandfather just ignored him, I think. He was basically all alone.”
They were both silent for a minute, in mutual recognition of this reality.
Then Liz scowled. “You’d think that, after having a sucky childhood himself, he would have tried to be a decent dad.”
“I think he wanted to be.”
“Yeah. Well, this is a great way to be a father. Not laying eyes on his own daughter since the day she was born.”
Shifting uncomfortably in her chair and chewing on her bite of sandwich, Erin didn’t respond. She preferred not to think about Seth more than she had to. His absence in her life now was like a gaping hole that she had to carefully avoid falling into.
“Bastard,” Liz muttered, ruthlessly ripping into her sandwich with her teeth.
“He’s not, really.”
“Well, what would you call him then? He doesn’t get what he wants so he abandons both of you completely? Even after you tried to apologize to him over and over?”
Erin winced at the thought. She’d tried to call Seth every day for a week after he’d walked out on her in the hospital. She'd left long, earnest, embarrassingly babbling voice-mail messages, trying to apologize. When that hadn’t worked, she’d written him a 3200-word email, explaining why she’d been confused and how she’d never wanted to hurt him.
No reply. No emails, no calls, no visits. Nothing.
Apparently, to Seth, she
and her daughter no longer existed.
When Erin didn’t answer the question, Liz huffed, “It’s called being a bastard. And a childish, sulky one at that.”
“It’s not all his fault.” While she agreed with much of Liz’s assessment, she just couldn’t look at it so simplistically. “I did things wrong too. I treated him very badly.”
She still felt brutal guilt every time she thought of how much she’d messed up—every time she remembered the look on Seth’s face when she’d told him they weren’t in love.
“Ha! So you were dense and thoughtless. You’d just gone through twenty hours of labor. What the hell did he expect?”
“He thought I felt the same way and that we’d live happily ever after.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a good thing you didn’t, if this is the way he’s going to act. He claims to love you, but then he drops you completely because he gets his feelings hurt. That’s not love. That’s selfishness.”
Sometimes Erin was just as resentful and betrayed as Liz was.
But most of the time she was just sad.
“Maybe,” she admitted. “But this is Seth, and he’d just managed to open himself up for the first time…maybe ever. Only to be utterly crushed.” She leaned back in her chair. Looked over to her pumpkin for comfort. “He’s not going to open up again.”
Liz was shaking her head irritably.
“It’s the way he protects himself,” Erin added, trying to explain what she knew about his nature. “That was why he went so wild back in high school. Mac was trying to be family, and Seth just ran away from it. He took a huge risk with me, and it backfired. Which means, I guess, that he won't even see us. At least, his accountant is still covering the childcare expenses, or I don’t know what I would do.”
“Selfish,” Liz insisted. “Because, while he’s protected in his cold, empty world, his daughter now doesn’t have a father.”
Erin looked back at her little pumpkin—sleeping with her eyes squeezed shut, breathing in fast, little inhales.
She wanted to give her everything. Knew there was at least one thing now that her daughter would never have.
Erin’s face twisted briefly.
“I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. Y’all will do great, even without him.” Liz paused for a moment. “Have you changed your mind about him?”
“No. I’ve never felt romantically about him. I did...do care about him. And not having him in my life really hurts.” She took a few deep breaths and regained her matter-of-fact outlook—a stronghold that hadn’t failed her yet. “Especially since it’s not just my loss. It’s hers.”
“Bastard.”
“Yeah. Sometimes I convince myself that, if he’s going to act like this, then it’s just as well he’s not in her life. And, you know, even if I had been in love with him, I would never have accepted his implied ultimatum—get together with me or I won’t be a father.” She sighed. “But I should have handled it better, and I hate for her to have to pay for my mistakes.”
Liz had finished her sandwich and was starting on one of the iced molasses cookies they’d gotten for dessert. She gave Erin a slightly wary, sideways look. “So you really weren’t in love with him?”
“Why is that so hard to believe? He’s not completely irresistible, you know. When I first got pregnant, I was so scared of his potential to be overly controlling. He’s not really what I thought, though. He’s really very giving. And patient. And funny. And…and sweet beneath all the cool arrogance. I liked and trusted him. But, Liz, that doesn't equal love.”
They were both silent for a moment.
Then Erin blew her hair out of her face. “I really wanted him to be her father. I think he could be a good one, but now he’ll never let himself be one.”
“Bastard.”
Erin couldn’t help but smile at Liz’s grumbling, repeated refrain. “Maybe, but he’s a lot of other things too.”
Liz’s face softened. “I guess I didn’t realize it was so hard for you. You always seem so matter-of-fact about his disappearance. In fact, Dad seemed more upset about it than you.”
Erin gave a huff of bitter laughter, as she thought about how disappointed her father had been when they’d realized Seth was backing off for good. She’d done her best to treat the issue lightly around her dad, so he would never know how deeply hurt she was.
“I’m not depressed or in the depths of despair. I’ve been really emotional lately, but I’m not sure if it’s a postpartum thing or just being bone tired.” She glanced back over to the baby carrier, realizing she hadn’t checked on her daughter in at least three minutes. “How could I not be happy with her? It just makes me sad to think about what she almost had.”
***
As soon as they got back to Erin’s apartment, Liz started digging into her bag. “Wait until you see the present I brought.”
“You didn’t have to—” Erin began, but then she stopped when she saw what her sister had pulled out.
It was a tiny, infant’s t-shirt with the logo of their high school football team on the front.
Erin laughed and clapped her hands appreciatively. “It’s perfect. We’ll try it on her after I nurse her. She’s hungry now.”
She picked her daughter up out of the carrier and brought her over to a chair in the living room. Then adjusted her shirt, unhooked the cup of her nursing bra, and positioned the baby at her breast.
Liz wandered away casually. She never seemed to want to hang around as Erin breastfed, even though Erin was perfectly comfortable and mostly covered.
“Are you hungry, pumpkin?” Erin murmured, brushing her nipple lightly against her daughter’s lips. The little mouth immediately latched on and began to suck.
Erin sighed. She wasn’t a particularly knowledgeable or experienced mother, and she was barely muddling through a lot of the time.
But at least she was good at breastfeeding.
In fact, she’d had no problems with it at all—with her milk, her nipples, or getting her daughter to feed. It had been easy, intuitive, perhaps the only thing in this whole experience which had come naturally for her.
Erin knew that some women had a lot of trouble with it, so she was glad that for once things had gone smoothly for her.
The only thing she didn't like was having to express milk with the breast pump. Other than that, she enjoyed nursing more than she’d thought she could.
She loved being needed in this most fundamental of ways. Loved being able to completely answer those needs.
Loved how quiet and simple the world seemed to be when she could just sit like this. Feed her daughter. Know that she was making her happy.
“Shit, Erin,” Liz called out from Erin’s bedroom. “This is ridiculous.”
“Hey! Watch the language.” Liz still didn’t always remember to curb her mouth. “What’s ridiculous?”
“You’ve got a mountain of laundry in here.”
Erin exhaled, hating to be reminded of it. “I know. I was trying to hide it in the closet, but it won’t all fit in there anymore.” She glanced down. Saw that the little mouth was still sucking steadily, making the wet noises that had become somehow comforting to Erin over the last three months.
“How do you have enough underwear?”
“I didn’t,” she admitted. “I had to buy some more.”
She heard Liz laughing from the bedroom and wondered what she was doing in there.
“How long has it been since you did laundry last?”
“I don’t know. Three weeks. Maybe longer. I just don’t have the time or energy, and now it seems like such an exhausting ordeal.”
Stella, the middle-aged woman who worked as her nanny during the week, did chores that revolved around childcare—the baby’s laundry and cleaning the nursery or kitchen after she’d used them. Sometimes, Erin suspected that Stella was secretly cleaning up while she was at work, but she hadn't yet been able to confirm her suspicions. For the most part, the apartment was livable, but piles of junk had collec
ted that Erin just didn’t have energy to sort through.
Her laundry had suffered the most.
Liz came back through the living room with a load of laundry in her arms.
Erin blinked. “Thanks, Liz. But you don’t have to—”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m just putting it in the washing machine. You’re the one who’s going to have to fold or hang it up.”
Erin groaned. That was the worst part.
While Liz put her laundry in the washing machine—which was part of a stacked unit just off the kitchen—Erin finished nursing.
Then she picked up her daughter, holding her upright to burp her. After just a minute of rubbing and patting her back, she was rewarded by spit-up on her shirt.
Erin wiped it up and then cleaned up her daughter’s mouth. The big blue eyes were open and staring at her, so Erin grinned and made smacking noises until she got a response—babbling sounds that resembled little baby giggles.
“Lunchtime over?” Liz asked, coming into the living room to join them.
“Yep,” Erin replied, leaning over to kiss the tiny, warm forehead, and then putting her bra back together and straightening her shirt. “I need to change her diaper, so bring the t-shirt into the nursery and we’ll try it on.”
They walked together into the nursery, which Erin still was inordinately proud of. After changing the diaper, Erin pulled off the pumpkin dress. Gently tickled the soft belly to get her to giggle again.
So far, she was a very good-natured baby. She cried when she was hungry or tired, but—except when she was sick—it never took much to settle her down.
Erin didn’t deserve such a perfect daughter.
Liz snorted at her besotted expression and handed her the tiny t-shirt. Erin put it on and then picked her up to show her off to Liz.
Laughing, she said, “There. It's just a little short."
It actually looked adorable, so Erin couldn't help but gush a little. She carried her over to the rocker, where she sat down and held her upright in her lap. Her daughter pushed her feet against Erin's thighs, putting some of her weight on her own legs, as if she were trying to stand.
Erin took this as an obvious sign that her three-month-old was some kind of protégé.
